The recently formed University of St. Thomas Printing Task Force has been working for the past few months to provide St. Thomas departments with guidelines related to the sourcing of printing and related services.
The work of the task force is occurring at the direction of the university’s Board of Trustees and is consistent with the Bulletin Today announcement by Dr. Mark Dienhart and Dr. Susan Huber on May 21. It is believed that following these guidelines will result in reduced institutional costs and improved efficiencies that will help keep tuition down.
Printing or mailing projects on behalf of the university are required to be checked by the Service Center to determine whether it has the capability and capacity to do the project. When working with University Relations, your representative will include the Service Center as one of the print vendors in order to make sure you are receiving the best price.
The Service Center will reply to these inquiries within 24 hours. If the Service Center is not able to do the work, a “Not Able To Perform …” e-mail will be sent to the requester, who is then responsible for forwarding it to the department paying for the outside work. This note must be attached to the outside printer’s invoice and sent to Accounts Payable for payment. There may be times when an outside vendor could be the low-cost producer, primarily due to equipment differences, and thus it would be in UST’s best interest to utilize them. In order to make sure your print project is done as quickly and inexpensively as possible, please use the following details as you plan your print jobs:
- If you typically work with University Relations for print jobs, contact your representative as you have in the past. The UR representative assigned to your school or college will check with the Service Center and determine if your project can be printed on campus.
- If you usually work directly with the Service Center, contact it as early as possible in the planning phase of your printing or mailing project by e-mail at printproject@stthomas.edu with the specifications so that it can be determined whether the project can be completed in-house. If you need assistance in determining some of these specifications, the Service Center can help.
- If the Service Center can do the work, you can work with Service Center staff to prepare it for submission, or if it’s ready to go, the project can be submitted electronically through SCOOP or in person on the south campus in St. Paul.
- If the Service Center is unable to do the work, an e-mail response will be sent within 24 hours, after which the department will be free to work with one of UST’s preferred print vendors. The e-mail response must be attached to that vendor’s invoice before sending to Accounts Payable for payment.
As per UST’s bidding guidance, if a department is sourcing a printing or mailing project from an outside vendor (only preferred print vendors may be used) and the total is more than $3,000, then three competitive bids must be obtained.
We recognize that there will be growing pains based on these new processes. Please feel free to contact the Service Center or Purchasing Services with questions.
Members of the St. Thomas Printing Task Force are:
- John Barron, Service Center
- Karen Harthorn, Purchasing and Payables
- Kimberley Herrema, College of Applied Professional Studies
- Lisa Guyott, Opus College of Business
- Robin Schreiber, Center for Business Excellence
- Bill Kirchgessner, University Relations
